The Secondary School Movement

St Mark's Boys' Secondary School (converted) This secondary school was opened in 1897, and was closed after World War II when the Lakenham Secondary Modern schools were built. The building is now used for Youth Service offices, School Meals service, and school transport. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Public schooling was on its way to full development across all grades during the beginning of the nineteenth century. A great success in the public school movement of elementary schools was established by this time, as well as state supported universities. The issue was the gap in education between the two. This called for an increase in the accessibility to free and appropriated public secondary schools.
The first public secondary school was established in 1821, and it was called the English Classical School. This later became the Boy's High School, because it was an all boys school, but soon after similar schools arose for girls. By the end of the Civil War six thousand of these schools had spouted within the nation. The focus of these schools was either based upon general curriculum, or college preparation. Now many people were not in favor of these schools due to the fact taxes were raised in order to fund them. The Kalamazoo Michigan case though was one of many court cases that put an end to this idea, stating tax money could be used to fund schools. Also as the country moved from rural to urban, and agrarian to industrial a need for a higher education was increasing. This increased the popularity of secondary schools as well.
From this ides for furthering education secondary schools became a way of life, later sprouting the idea of Junior High Schools for individuals not quite ready to make the leap from elementary to High School. This is the basic evolution of secondary schools with the United States.